in Syria people are dying by the thousand, the Jihadis are getting the upper hand, its threatening to spread across borders. Our plan A isn’t working.

Well what’s Plan B?

From the perspective of this observer, the Team Obama choom gang wants the Syrian rebels to win and then turn into Liberal Democrats. Riiiight! Just like the Egyptian people were going to elect a moderate non-sectarian government with limited powers determined to separate mosque and state.

Or our famous intervention in Libya which resulted on a failed state in which four of our people were just murdered. And speaking of Libya

Speaking of guns, events surrounding the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi have never been fully explained, giving rise to reports, such as this one, quoting an “intelligence insider” as saying the administration has been running guns without the appearance of running them:

The entire arms and weapons running operation was headquartered in Benghazi, The weapons were actually being shipped out of Libya from the port city of Dernah, located about a hundred miles east of Benghazi. That was the ‘choke point’ of the weapons being shipped out. Remember the Lusitania? Think in those terms, ships carrying weapons hid among ‘humanitarian aid.’ By the time of the attacks, an estimated 30-40 million pounds of arms were already transported out of Libya.

From there, the weapons were being sent to staging areas in Turkey near the Syrian border, for use by the Free Syrian Army and other ragtag terrorist groups to fight against Assad. The objective was and still is to destabilize the Assad government.

You may say “that’s a likely story”. Who would believe it? But the “intelligence insider’s” story is about as likely as the administration’s tale that the attack was about a YouTube video. Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East continues full speed ahead into the dark.

A satirist might write a piece on a black female Secretary of State nominee, who was harshly questioned by Congress and attacked on specifically racial and sexual grounds, only to see another black female SoS nominee a few years later defended on the grounds that questioning a black female SoS nominee is “racist and sexist” because THIS black woman was nominated by a Democrat, so Of Course It’s Different.

However, not even the broadest satirist would give the two nominees the same last name. It would simply shatter the willing suspension of disbelief.

The original post?

Emily Litella Rice

I don’t understand why Republicans are opposing Ms. Rice to be the next Secretary of State. She was perfectly acceptable to Republicans (not to mention, just as black and just as female) four years ago when she was Bush’s Secretary of State, so why do they oppose her now? Knowledgeable, competent, honest, and strong, Ms. Rice did a pretty good job then.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Francis Porretto is an underground national treasure. Operating form the fundamental set of principles founded in decency and adherence to the Constitution, his thoughts are worth repeating. Here is a fundamental truth.

Politics is the pursuit of power over others, nominally by non-violent means. Why would free men -- men who want to be free and who think of themselves as free -- prefer one group of power-seekers over another? Why would they want anyone to have power over them? Freedom is the antithesis of political power.

The usual response is that even the most freedom-minded man will agree to tolerate a certain amount of political power -- a certain amount of government -- as a "necessary evil." A military to defend the country and protect its overseas interests; a penal code to enumerate offenses no one will be allowed to get away with; a judiciary to oversee prosecutions and civil disputes: these, if kept passive and prevented from expanding to elephantine dimensions, would be tolerable as "labor-saving devices." They obviate private armies and private justice, which most persons are inclined to distrust.

The Constitution of the United States expresses precisely this understanding: This far you may go, and no further. It does so in plain, unambiguous language that virtually all politicians, regardless of party affiliation, prefer to ignore.

But the Constitution is a series of words on parchment. How could it possibly be more authoritative than other writings, many of them by men of great wisdom and compassion, that differ radically from its prescriptions and proscriptions?

Since Obama is now depicted as Jesus, it occurred to Glenn Beck that it was appropriate to follow the example of Robert Mapplethorpe who gained fame for immersing an image of a crucified Christ in jar of his own urine, calling it "Piss Christ," and exhibiting it in a New York museum, paid for by an NEA grant.

So Beck took a bobble head doll of Obama and immersed it in an amber liquid in a mason jar.

Outrage ensued.

Obama in Pee-pee

Calling it "Obama in Pee Pee" he went on to auction it off on e-Bay with the proceeds to go to charity. The bidding had exceeded $11,000 when e-Bay pulled the item, saying that it did not meet their standards since they will not sell body parts or bodily fluids, among other things. They also threatened his with a re-education class if he ever went there again.

According to some of Beck's staff the amber liquid was beer rather than urine but others have said that beer is just urine in its raw, unprocessed form.

This is an example of why Glenn Beck is successful. He manages to skewer the pretensions of several of Liberalism’s sacred cows with one wicked thrust. See below for the full video.

Towards the end of the lecture, Ruder used toothpaste as an example of capitalism’s inefficiencies.

“If you no longer have one section competing against another, you start to eliminate all kinds of waste,” he said, referencing toothpaste brands Colgate and Crest.

Ruder then described the “wastefulness” of toothpaste’s price: “About 90% of the price you pay for toothpaste goes into packaging, advertising, and profit, and 10% is the actual contents of the toothpaste.”

The cost of attending Northwestern exceeds $60,000 per year. The cost of a tube of toothpaste is $3 for a large tube. For one year's attendance at Northwestern you can get a 20,000 tubes of Crest that would last you about 20 lifetimes. I think I see where the waste is.

A political science professor at Butler University asks students to disregard their “American-ness, maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality, middle-class status” when writing and speaking in the classroom – a practice the school’s arts and sciences dean defended as a way to negate students’ inherent prejudices.

The syllabus of the course at Butler, a small Midwestern liberal arts institution in Indianapolis, spells out that students should use “inclusive language” because it’s “a fundamental issue of social justice.”

“Language that is truly inclusive affirms sexuality, racial and ethnic backgrounds, stages of maturity, and degrees of limiting conditions,” the syllabus states, referencing a definition created by the United Church of Christ.

The syllabus of the class, called Political Science 201: Research and Analysis, goes on to ask students “to write and speak in a way that does not assume American-ness, maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality, middle-class status, etc. to be the norm.” It is taught by a black, female professor.

I sooo want to take that course. The teacher would not get one minute of peace.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Professor Jacobson gives a time-line on the dis-invitation of Ann Coulter from speaking at Fordham. It's rather sad and particularly pathetic on the part of the people who originally invited her. It provides an insight into the kind of people who grow up to be the Republican leaders of the future. Jacobson calls them "a fine group" and as individuals they may well be, but as leaders they are losers.

of course most o four disapproval should be directed at the Leftists in the faculty, administration and the student body who have adopted "Brown Shirt" tactics that are imported straight from the street battles of Germany in the early 1930s.

"The gods of wisdom and virtue have had enough. And now... they want their stuff back."

The Full Flower of the Arab Spring

It is said that a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. Right now, the optimism that I hear from the administration and the MSM in the midst of a very fluid situation sounds very much like the hope for the second marriage.The problem with the optimism that many are expressing for the revolutions in the Middle East is that, while there are many examples of happy marriages, there are no examples of democratic Islamist regimes. The Middle East was substantially converted to Islam following the dictates and example of Muhammad whose rule and religion was spread by the sword. This situation has not changed substantially since Mohammad’s death in 632. Before Mohammad the region was ruled by Romans, king and Pharaohs; after him it was ruled by Caliphs. There is no - zero - example of Democracy in the Middle East with the exception of Israel and a very shaky state – Iraq – which was created, nurtured and shaped by the American military following the invasion under George Bush. To repeat, there is no history or political culture of representative government in the Middle East. The one unifying factor in the region is Islam, a religion that demands submission to its political and theological dictates on pain of death. Not since Henry the Eight created the English church and became its political head have rulers held such secular and religious power.

Egypt is once again a dictatorship, but this time the dictator is a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, an assembly of Muslim fanatics who hate the West and think that Hitler’s solution for the Jews did not go far enough. And he has essentially been crowned by the “smart diplomacy” of the Worst President Ever.

Looking around me, does it seem strange that most of the people who are paid to write or opine on developments around the world were so wrong? And if you are Roger Cohen, remain so wrong? There are a few professions where being wrong – drastically, incredibly, extremely, extraordinarily wrong – is not an impediment to success. One is politics, the other is opinion writing.

Here is NY Times columnist Tom Friedman: Lessons From Tahrir Sq. in which he advises the Israelis and the Palestinians to look to the revolution that took place in Egypt and emulate it.

Colum McCann catches the spirit in this NY Times photo essay on the Arab Spring. It's a virtual love song to the Arab Spring that would be x-rated if it were any more explicit.

THE BREATH AND HUM of democracy seemed almost a libidinous thing in parts of the Middle East, but, in truth, the body heat had been simmering for years. The protests took hold in Tunisia in late 2010 after the street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire. The kindle caught and the spirit of his self-immolation lit a fuse across the region. A wave of protests struck Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan. Almost as soon as protesters in Cairo were being herded away from Tahrir Square, they were dancing at the news of Mubarak’s resignation.

The best cure for what ails the Middle East is what it has lacked: free debate and democracy. In the short term, that may lead to mistaken policies or greater friction with the West. But over time extremists and fundamentalists are more likely to be discredited. The Arab world’s huge and rising young generation wants the freedom and prosperity it sees spreading in much of the rest of the world — and the rest of the world should be betting on that.

It looks like that bet just lost. The question is why anyone would bet their lives and the lives of millions of people on an outcome that had no remote chance of happening? Liberals really do live in their own universe where their wishes, hopes and fantasies are reality.

And Turkey, which is actually part of NATO, is now swinging into the Islamist orbit, shedding 90 years of secular government. The current regime is purging the military while providing resources to groups attacking Israel.

It must be asked: how does it benefit America's interest to replace dictators who do business with us with fanatical despots who hate us, burn our flag, invade our embassies, seek to destroy our allies and in their religious hears want to see us dead?

Michael Totten has an excellent article on Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. He recounts how carefully chosen, indoctrinated and vetted the Muslim Brotherhood is. It's a very select, insular group. Not anyone can join and not everyone who joins can stay. And then there's the problem of Egyptian society and culture itself.

Egypt’s deeply embedded illiberalism isn’t exactly a secret. It’s the country’s most obvious political characteristic, one that imposes itself on the observant almost at once. Egyptian blogger Big Pharaoh explained it to me this way the first time I visited Cairo seven years ago: “Most of the armed terrorist groups we see now were born out of the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood…My biggest fear is that if the Muslim Brotherhood rules Egypt we will get Islamism-lite, that they won’t be quite bad enough that people will revolt against them. Most Egyptians don’t drink, so they won’t mind if alcohol is illegal. The same goes for banning books. Most Egyptians don’t read. So why should they care if books are banned? Most women wear a veil or a headscarf already, so if it becomes the law hardly anyone will resist.”

But sure, the Brothers threw the word “democracy” around when they were on their way up, especially when gullible foreign journalists were in town. They got a big kick out of portraying themselves as religiously conservative democrats, as though they were the Egyptian equivalents of Germany’s Christian Democrats or the Republicans in the United States. But their slogan is and always has been “Islam is the solution.” They’re only moderate compared with the totalitarian Salafists.

Morsi promises that his dictatorial powers are temporary. Feel free to believe that if you find it credible. Hey, it might even be true. Weird things happen in the Middle East all the time. The army could remove him tomorrow. Other regime components might tell him to get stuffed, making him more Hugo Chavez than Fidel Castro. The “street” might throw the country into ungovernable chaos. Morsi might even feel enough pressure from abroad that he dials it down. But whatever happens later, he just proclaimed himself dictator. If he isn’t stopped, that’s exactly what he will be.

"David Gregory: Muslim Brotherhood 'Matured,' 'Sophisticated,' Egypt Not Comparable to Iran", the NBC "Meet the Press" host said that "They don't want to turn it into an Islamist state. They have matured politically in that sense and are rather sophisticated."At Reuters on January 29, 2011, Security Correspondent William Maclean relayed the insistence of Kamel El-Helbawy, "an influential cleric in the international Islamist ideological movement," that those who feared the Brotherhood were in essence engaging in paranoiaMohamed ElBaradei ..."You know, the Muslim Brotherhood has nothing to do with the Iranian model, has nothing to do with extremism ... The Muslim Brotherhood is a religiously conservative group. They are a minority in Egypt. ...They are in favor of a wording on the base of constitution that has red lines that every Egyptian has the same rights, same obligation, that the state in no way will be a state based on religion. And I have been reaching out to them. We need to include them."Tariq Ramadan, professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford and "the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928," ... "Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is a democratic partner, not Islamist threat. Barack Obama: “The Muslim Brotherhood is one faction in Egypt. They don’t have majority support in Egypt, but they are well organized and there are strains of their ideology that are against the U.S., there’s no doubt about it,”

NOTE: Edited from time to time. The Arab Spring is evolving daily and no where has it brought either democracy or peace.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Your daily dose of moral equivalence from Patrick Chappatte at the NY Times:

Need it be said that Patrick Chapette is an asshole? Combine this with the bigots at Reuters and you understand why Islamic Jihad thinks it can win. It has the world's media on its side and war can be won by sapping the morale of the enemy without ever winning a battle. For evidence see Viet Nam.﻿

5:48 pm: At the beginning of the day, I noted an ugly tweet by Reuters’ Anthony De Rosa. One response to De Rosa was sufficiently embarrassing and, uh, viral enough to make the wire service’s social media editor remove his tweet.

Anthony is the Reuters Social Media Editor, integrating the “ambient wire” that exists on social networks, where news now breaks before anywhere else, into Reuters platforms. He's also host of Reuters TV's "Tech Tonic" and a Reuters columnist.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Oh, oh. It looks as if $125,000 was not enough to buy the silence of Sheldon Stephens who recanted his recantation of teen-age sexual abuse by the voice of Elmo, Kevin Clash.

The man who accused Elmo’s puppeteer of sexual misconduct reportedly wants to recant his recantation.

Sheldon Stephens, 24, last week withdrew sensational claims that, as an underage teen, he had a wild fling with Kevin Clash, the voice behind the beloved Muppet Elmo.

Now Stephens is interviewing lawyers in hopes of ripping up the $125,000 deal he reached with Clash, 52, to deny there was any illegal sex, according to TMZ.

Stephens’ Pennsylvania lawyers last week released a statement on his behalf, absolving Clash of any wrongdoing: “He [Stephens] wants it to be known that his sexual relationship with Mr. Clash was an adult consensual relationship.”

However, Stephens now wants to return to his previous position, claiming Clash had sex with him when he was just 16, TMZ reports.

This can't be an Associated Press reporter. He actually demands answers, not a fog of words.

Via the Blaze, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reporter take a tone with a government functionary at a press conference quite like this. And it’s not the first time he’s done it, either. How does this guy not have his own cable news show already? Or better yet, an assignment as a White House beat reporter? “Yeah, first question. How much longer are we going to have to sit through your party’s crap about taxing our way out of this deficit mess?”

Monday, November 19, 2012

OK leftists. You got me. I am a racist. I can’t fool you. I’m a conservative, and it’s a well-known, indisputable fact that conservatives are racists. So I’m a racist.

When those “New Black Panthers” stood outside polling places during the 2008 and 2012 elections, holding those batons and threatening people if they did not vote for Obama, that wouldn’t have bothered me if only those Panthers had been white.

I would have stood up and cheered when Obama decided to eliminate the DC Schools initiative that gave opportunities for a superior education to underprivileged children (and vastly improved the future of each child who went through it) if only Obama had lighter skin.

I would absolutely support increasing taxes and fees on small business owners, and weighing them down with mind-numbingly punitive regulations, forcing many to close, some (who could) to move their companies overseas, and many to lay off workers. If only Obama was white.

I would be right there encouraging pregnant women to abort their babies, especially late in their term, and most especially if the abortion failed, refusing to help save those babies who survive. Killing babies would be no problem for me, if only Obama was caucasian.

Let's discuss raising us some revenue without
hurting the little people.

With the re-election of Barack Obama, I feel
compelled – in the spirit of coming together for the common good – to get on the
tax raising bandwagon.Here’s my
proposal.

·Let’s raise taxes to 50%
on people making more than $1 million dollars a year.How much will that raise? Warren Buffer says that the top 400 earners in the
US made $90 billion, so that means $45 billion to the
treasury. Plus it will satisfy Chuck Schumer.

·Let’s have a 100% sales
tax on the sale of movie tickets, CDs, videos and all other entertainment.These are purely luxury items and will not
affect the ability of the poor to live.Movies tickets, CD rentals and DVD sales alone should raise $30 billion.

·Let’s have a 100% sales
tax on newspapers and magazines.Circulation revenue for newspapers is $10 billion, let’s assume the same for magazines.That’s $20 billion in new revenue for
the government.Reporters and editors
have been calling for higher taxes and surely they would not mind doing their
fair share.

·Let’s have a 100% sales
tax on advertising in all media.Advertising is not only irritating but it is the way in which evil
corporations get us to spend our money on frivolous and unnecessary goods and
services. We should get about $100 billion just from the major networks and that isn’t
counting newspaper and magazine advertising which could double that number to $200
billion.

·Let’s tax all
foundations with assets over $100 million with a 10% tax of their assets each
year.Some of the biggest foundations
have been funding programs that increase taxes on the little people.Since they are in the business of
philanthropy, they should welcome doing their fair share.And while we’re doing that, let’s limit the
highest paid person working for the foundation to a salary of $75,000
annually.If they refuse to comply we’ll
revoke their tax exemption.The
hundred largest
foundations have assets over $236
billion dollars, and that only includes those with assets over $600
million.Total foundation assets are
about $500 billion.A 10% tax would
produce nearly $50 billion
per year.

·Let’s also tax
endowments with assets over $100 million with a 10% tax on their assets each
year.They, along with foundations,
should welcome doing their fair share.The Yale endowment alone is worth over $16 billion dollars and what do
they do with that? Not much that I can see.Does Yale need that money more than the people of the US?No!And while we’re doing that, let’s limit the highest paid person working
for the foundation to a salary of $75,000 annually.If they refuse to comply we’ll revoke their
tax exemption.Endowments total $250 billion; a 10% tax could raise $25 billion to help our
government balance its budget.

·We should investigate
the accounting practices of the movie industry.There is something seriously wrong with an industry that claims that
Forrest Gump never made a profit.We
don’t know how badly this industry has cheated the IRS, but let’s assume that $30 billion is a lowball
number.

In keeping with President Obama’s position that we
will do no “dynamic scoring,” we have already identified $400 billion
in new revenue to help close the deficit gap while only raising
taxes on 400 people!We have simply put
in some much needed sales taxes and are asking those who have been most vocal
about the need for everyone to do their fair share to come to the table.Surely no one could deny the reasonableness
of these proposals.

Now, if
anyone wants to tax the income of people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or the
buffoon who suckered thousands of people to fill his pockets by taking Facebook
public, people who already have all the money they could possibly spend in their
lifetimes at, say 100%, you would hear no objection from me.

When I immigrated our family needed a sponsor who guaranteed that we would not become a burden on the taxpayer. The concept that you could move here and apply for food stamps, social security, medicaid, medicare, and other government provided benfits did not exist. Today the Obama administration is encouraging immigrants to become burdens on the taxpayer. The Left thinks it's the right thing to do.

·Let’s raise taxes to 50%
on people making more than $1 million dollars a year.How much will that raise? Warren Buffer says that the top 400 earners in the
US made $90 billion, so that means $45 billion to the
treasury. Plus it will satisfy Chuck Schumer.

·Let’s have a 100% sales
tax on the sale of movie tickets, CDs, videos and all other entertainment.These are purely luxury items and will not
affect the ability of the poor to live.Movies tickets, CD rentals and DVD sales alone should raise $30 billion.

·Let’s have a 100% sales
tax on newspapers and magazines.Circulation revenue for newspapers is $10 billion, let’s assume the same for magazines.That’s $20 billion in new revenue for
the government.Reporters and editors
have been calling for higher taxes and surely they would not mind doing their
fair share.

·Let’s have a 100% sales
tax on advertising in all media.Advertising is not only irritating but it is the way in which evil
corporations get us to spend our money on frivolous and unnecessary goods and
services. We should get about $100 billion just from the major networks and that isn’t
counting newspaper and magazine advertising which could double that number to $200
billion.

·Let’s tax all
foundations with assets over $100 million with a 10% tax of their assets each
year.Some of the biggest foundations
have been funding programs that increase taxes on the little people.Since they are in the business of
philanthropy, they should welcome doing their fair share.And while we’re doing that, let’s limit the
highest paid person working for the foundation to a salary of $75,000
annually.If they refuse to comply we’ll
revoke their tax exemption.The
hundred largest
foundations have assets over $236
billion dollars, and that only includes those with assets over $600
million.Total foundation assets are
about $500 billion.A 10% tax would
produce nearly $50 billion
per year.

·Let’s also tax
endowments with assets over $100 million with a 10% tax on their assets each
year.They, along with foundations,
should welcome doing their fair share.The Yale endowment alone is worth over $16 billion dollars and what do
they do with that? Not much that I can see.Does Yale need that money more than the people of the US?No!And while we’re doing that, let’s limit the highest paid person working
for the foundation to a salary of $75,000 annually.If they refuse to comply we’ll revoke their
tax exemption.Endowments total $250 billion; a 10% tax could raise $25 billion to help our
government balance its budget.

·We should investigate
the accounting practices of the movie industry.There is something seriously wrong with an industry that claims that
Forrest Gump never made a profit.We
don’t know how badly this industry has cheated the IRS, but let’s assume that $30 billion is a lowball
number.

In keeping with President Obama’s position that we
will do no “dynamic scoring,” we have already identified $400 billion
in new revenue to help close the deficit gap while only raising
taxes on 400 people!We have simply put
in some much needed sales taxes and are asking those who have been most vocal
about the need for everyone to do their fair share to come to the table.Surely no one could deny the reasonableness
of these proposals.

Now, if
anyone wants to tax the income of people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or the
buffoon who suckered thousands of people to fill his pockets by taking Facebook
public, people who already have all the money they could possibly spend in their
lifetimes at, say 100%, you would hear no objection from me.

The Associated Press just gave a big, fat, sloppy, tongue down your throat kiss to the three officials that screwed up the rescue effort before and after Superstorm Sandy.

It begins:

Experts in leadership and disaster response interviewed by The Associated Press gave all three chief executives high marks for their performance so far in Superstorm Sandy, a disaster that left more than 100 people dead and presented perhaps the biggest crisis-management test yet for three Northeastern politicians who have all been rumored to hold presidential ambitions.

How do you get to be an “expert in leadership and disaster response” for the Associated Press? To start, you have to be a professor with no personal experience whatever in emergency response. For example Syracuse University political science professor Robert McClure who holds nothing back:

"Throughout the country, what the American people seek is a kind of authenticity in their public leaders, and these three guys have demonstrated that authenticity throughout this crisis,"

Competence? Foresight? Pre-planning? Making sure that emergency power was available for gas stations? Having enough bottled water pre-positioned? Making sure that power lines would not get torn down by falling trees? Apparently according to “expert in leadership and disaster response” Robert McClure what counts is being able to fake sincerity.

Chris Christie was the best, being seen photographed with Obama, hugging kids for the cameras telling them "Don't be scared." (Good advice from an expert)Taking time out from his busy schedule of press availabilities to appear on "Saturday Night Live."

It’s a wonder that the storm had any effect at all, what with the preparations beforehand.

All three men took firm command before Sandy arrived. Cuomo closed New York City's subways and tunnels hours before there was a threat of flooding and strategically "pre-positioned resources" days before, a move the federal transportation secretary later praised. Christie struck a get-tough note in ordering people to clear out along the coast, barking, "Don't be stupid" on Twitter. Bloomberg calmly ordered an evacuation of the city's low-lying areas.

The AP is in love. Note the adjectives: "firm command," Coumo “pre-positions” unspecified resources, the transportation secretary "praises" ("heck of a job Brownie"), Christie “barks” and Bloomberg is “calm.” Central Casting could not have done a better job.

Some of the other lovers of authenticity and “experts in leadership and disaster response” include Douglas Brinkley of Rice University, Doug Muzzio, political science professor at New York City's Baruch College, and Princeton University politics professor Brandice Canes-Wrone. Brinkley summarized it all for these experts

"Here, all three showed stellar leadership."

Meanwhile off campus and away from the Associated Press, a few people who are actual victims of the storm are not feeling the love.

Really? After Hurricane Katrina you got the impression that emergency relief IS FEMA's job. Or maybe that's only when a Republican is president. Because the AP couldn't bother with this while smooching CuomoChristieBloomberg.

It didn't set up its first relief center until four days after Sandy hit -- only to run out of drinking water on the same day. It couldn't put sufficient boots on the ground to protect Queens residents from roving looters. The Red Cross -- on whom FEMA depends for delivering basic goods -- left Staten Island stranded for nearly a week, prompting borough President Jim Molinaro to fume that America was not a Third World country. But FEMA's most egregious gaffe was that it arranged for 24 million gallons of free gas for Sandy's victims, but most of them couldn't lay their hands on it.

But if you think FEMA's inability to provide rapid relief subverts the core reason for its existence, think again. A few days after the Times' valentine, FEMA head W. Craig Fugate told the newspaper that the agency's rapid response role is really a fallacy. "The general public assumes we are part of the response team that will be there the first couple of days," he said. But it is really designed to deal with disasters several days after the fact.

How does FEMA do that? By indiscriminately writing checks -- a task at which it evidently excels.

Experts in leadership and disaster response were not asked to respond.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

OUTPERFORMING ENVER HOXHA. Results like this are typically found on Communist dictatorships, although in those places they usually give a few tenths of a percent to the "opposition" to make it look as if there is an opposition.

In critical swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois there are a lot of precincts in Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago which reported 100% of their votes cast for Obama. These add up to many 10's of thousands of votes for Obama and 0 for Romney. I repeat, 0 for Romney. I have read a number of articles about this and people knowlegable in Political Science and Statistics are starting to take notice of this.Statistically, even if among 10's of thousands of voters all wanted to vote for Obama, it would not be possible to receive 100% of the vote because at least a few would make a mistake and vote incorrectly for Romney. Not to mention the fact that a least a few of those 10's of thousands might actually disagree with Obama. These types of election returns are only seen in countries run by dictators.

It appears that the Obama machine in Philadelphia actually beat the Chicago machine in rigging the election. Philadelphia had 59 precincts that voted 100% for Obama, Chicago only 37.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Let’s raise us some taxes.

Let's discuss raising us some revenue without hurting the little people.

With the re-election of Barack Obama, I feel compelled – in the
spirit of coming together for the common good – to get on the tax raising
bandwagon.Here’s my proposal.

·Let’s raise taxes to 50% on people making more
than $1 million dollars a year.How much
will that raise? Warren Buffer says that the top 400 earners in the US made $90 billion, so that means $45 billion to the treasury. Plus it will satisfy Chuck Schumer.

·Let’s have a 100% sales tax on the sale of movie
tickets, CDs, videos and all other entertainment.These are purely luxury items and will not affect
the ability of the poor to live.Movies
tickets, CD rentals and DVD sales alone should raise $30
billion.

·Let’s have a 100% sales tax on newspapers and
magazines.Circulation revenue for
newspapers is $10 billion,
let’s assume the same for magazines.That’s $20 billion in
new revenue for the government.Reporters
and editors have been calling for higher taxes and surely they would not mind doing
their fair share.

·Let’s have a 100% sales tax on advertising in
all media.Advertising is not only
irritating but it is the way in which evil corporations get us to spend our money
on frivolous and unnecessary goods and services. We should get about $100 billion
just from the major networks and that isn’t counting newspaper and magazine advertising
which could double that number to
$200 billion.

·Let’s tax all foundations with assets over $100
million with a 10% tax of their assets each year.Some of the biggest foundations have been
funding programs that increase taxes on the little people.Since they are in the business of philanthropy,
they should welcome doing their fair share.And while we’re doing that, let’s limit the highest paid person working
for the foundation to a salary of $75,000 annually.If they refuse to comply we’ll revoke their
tax exemption.The hundred
largest foundations have assets over $236 billion dollars, and that only
includes those with assets over $600 million.Total foundation assets are about $500 billion.A 10% tax would produce nearly $50 billion per year.

·Let’s also tax endowments with assets over $100
million with a 10% tax on their assets each year.They, along with foundations, should welcome
doing their fair share.The Yale
endowment alone is worth over $16 billion dollars and what do they do with that? Not much that I can see.Does Yale need that money more than the people
of the US?No!And while we’re doing that, let’s limit the
highest paid person working for the foundation to a salary of $75,000
annually.If they refuse to comply we’ll
revoke their tax exemption.Endowments total $250 billion; a 10%
tax could raise $25 billion
to help our government balance its budget.

·We should investigate the accounting practices
of the movie industry.There is something
seriously wrong with an industry that claims that Forrest Gump never made a
profit.We don’t know how badly this
industry has cheated the IRS, but let’s assume that $30 billion is a lowball number.

In keeping with President Obama’s position that we will do no “dynamic scoring,” we have already identified $400 billion in new
revenue to help close the deficit gap while only raising taxes on 400 people!We have simply put in some much needed sales
taxes and are asking those who have been most vocal about the need for everyone
to do their fair share to come to the table.Surely no one could deny the reasonableness of these proposals.

Now,
if anyone wants to tax the income of people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or the buffoon who suckered thousands of people to fill his pockets by taking Facebook public,
people who already have all the money they could possibly spend in their
lifetimes at, say 100%, you would hear no objection from me.

Trees in Autumn

Rep. Allen West won a full recount of early voting in St. Lucie County when the county’s canvassing board voted late Friday to grant his request.Local news accounts said the decision came in a 2-1 vote.

We’ve got a president Klink who knows nothing, hears nothings, and sees nothing.

News that rockets were fired at southern Israel from the Sinai — from Egypt in other words — raised the possibility that an IDF operation directed against Gaza might lead to further incidents with Cairo.

Egyptian newspaper Al-Shorouk reported Friday that an Egyptian militant group in Sinai Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the launching of the rockets.

“The rockets were launched from the northern part of Sinai,” the newspaper said.

It added that the group also released a video clip showing “that the rockets were fired from 107-millimeter rocket launchers.”

Although the attacks will be attributed to rebel elements acting independently of Cairo, the unanswered question posed by simultaneous attacks on American diplomatic missions in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt on September 11, 2012 are to what extent Jihadi groups are intermingled with ‘government’ agencies in those countries.

Richard Fernandez

For once a crisis is brewing which no amount of bribery — offers of arms to Israel or food and money to Egypt — can long forestall. The true bill for the lies at Benghazi and the entire ‘Arab Spring’ enterprise may no longer be avoided. At long last some answers must be provided. How deep is the administration’s partnership with the Muslim Brotherhood? Just what did the assault on US consulates throughout the region truly portend? Is there substantial opposition to the policy of dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood from within American intelligence agencies or the military?

And if so, why has it not been discussed till now? Why are the papers bannering Paula Broadwell or any number of the tabloid talking points the media trots out to protect Obama? Those tactics have allowed the administration to avoid building a broad, bipartisan and national consensus for whatever it is doing in the Middle East by laying down a wall of smoke. Operating behind a compliant screen of media apologists and vilifying any critics in its path, the administration has pursued an unaccountable course in the region, saying one thing to the public and doing God knows what in private.

All the lies, the smokescreens, the sex scandals and the boot-kissing media can come unravelled if there is a real Arab-Ireal war in the Middle East. But Israel faces a problem. Demographic and political attitudes have changed in the US (witness the last election) and they have changed even more in Europe. Today it is Israel who is viewed by the “Obama Constituency,” - the Left, the press, academia, European elite opinion - as the aggressor. I believe that the current Israeli leadership understands this and realizes that time is not on their side. That increases the possibility that Israel will strike, and strike soon. Obama may have precipitated the coming war.

Would you not tell the President that his CIA Director is under investigation and could be blackmailed? What kind of a dim bulb believes this? The answer is people who want to believe, who need to believe because to do otherwise brings their belief in Obama into question. He's their messiah and you don't give up your faith easily.

Obviously, the president relies on the CIA director for security assessments and briefings on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Can the attorney general and the White House seriously argue that the fact that Petraeus had an extramarital affair that made him subject to blackmail, and that he might have disclosed classified information to his paramour, was not important for the president to know when carrying out his duties to protect the country from national security threats as commander-in-chief?

One of the reasons for the FBI protocols and the DOJ guidance is preventing interference with criminal investigations of third parties who may have political connections with the White House or Congress. That rationale does not apply to the investigation of a high-level government official who is a direct subordinate of the president. Both the president and the National Security Council should have been immediately informed about this investigation when the security issues arose.

In fact, a long-time acquaintance who worked in the Office of the Attorney General in a prior administration told me it was inconceivable that an attorney general would not inform the White House counsel or the president that the president’s CIA director was being investigated.

We’ve got a president Klink who knows nothing, hears nothings, and sees nothing.

The name Richard Windsor may sound innocuous, but it is allegedly one of the secret “alias” email accounts used by Obama EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

“That is the name — sorry, one of the alias names — used by Obama’s radical EPA chief to keep her email from those who ask for it,” Chris Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of the new book “The Liberal War on on Transparency,” told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an email.

In his book, Horner revealed the existence of “alias” email accounts used by EPA administrators. The first such transparency dodge, he writes, came from Carol Browner, former director of the Obama White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy and Bill Clinton’s EPA administrator.

Keep in mind that this is the "most transparent administration in history." If you don't believe them, just ask them. Use e-mail.

The union’s willingness to go down with the sinking ship — and in some cases take credit for sinking it — in the Hostess case may prove to corporate investors that the working class must be reckoned with, said University of Southern Maine economist and labor relations expert Michael Hillard.

“They’re saying to the world at large, ‘We deserve a working income. We work hard, we deserve a living wage, and we don’t just want to be pawns in a corporate game,’” he said. “There’s a philosophical victory. But in an economic sense, you’re walking a fine line, because all of a sudden you’re cast into a void of not knowing what tomorrow brings… Putting myself in their shoes, I’d be scared, because there’s so much uncertainty in this economy.”

Don't worry Al. There's not a lot of uncertainty. The economy is either treading water or headed for another recession. The workers without jobs will now get 99 weeks of unemployment, food stamps, an ObamaPhone and are at the top of the list to vote for the next Democrat. Win/win.

A lawsuit filed in federal court on Wednesday alleges mass favoritism in the Department of Energy’s decisions to award federal grants to major car companies to develop electric vehicles, according to a legal complaint obtained by Scribe.

The plaintiff, San Francisco-based XP Technology, says in a complaint filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that “corruption and negligence” pervaded DOE’s decision to award loan guarantees to Ford, Nissan, Tesla Motors, and Fisker Automotive for the development of electric vehicle technology.

“Investigations have shown that DOE officials intentionally stalled numerous applicants’ reviews in order to force them out of business and protect favored players,” the complaint claims.

The press was given another opportunity to tell us how wonderful Obama is. Democrat politicians told him how wonderful he is.

As for the people affected,

”Help Us Obama Please Now!” [said a sign held by some poor deluded fool]

....the first and only resident we were able to speak with expressed dissatisfaction with some of the help they have received since the storm.

At the tents, a man named Al Bevacqua said “it seems like FEMA can’t do anything without the insurance companies,” which he accused of putting him and other Staten Islanders “on hold.” On Cedar Grove Avenue, just before the president spoke to the group we talked to a woman named Stacy Chifando who said she had suffered serious consequences from the storm and was disappointed with the help she subsequently received from FEMA.

“We just really want to get back on our feet and FEMA’s not doing too much to help us right now,” said Ms. Chifando.

She went on to explain that many of the residents had not received the funds for temporary housing they hoped to obtain from FEMA.

“They tell us we need computers, but there’s no power. We don’t have computers,” she said.

The real purpose of the trip was found at the end:

After the speeches, President Obama parted ways with the local officials.

“Alright guys, hang in there,” he said.

Before departing in his motorcade, the president walked over to another group of locals for a final round of handshakes, photos and hugs.